I push off the wall and sprint through the Illusion hedge.
Kassandra sits on the stone bench alone, her nose pink, lips smudged with color. By the time I reach her, Death is already by her side.
“Is everything okay, my lady?” he asks. “Where is the king?”
“He left,” she says. “He returned to his chambers.”
“Thank you, my lady.” Then he is gone once more.
Kassandra stands, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, her eyes empty.What has happened?Despite myself, I reach into my skirt pocket for a handkerchief and offer it to her. She dabs her face with it, then meets my gaze.
Her brows pull together. “Stop looking at me like that.”
Like what?
“Let’s go.” She moves beyond me, and I follow, hands clasped together, head down. As she marches out of the gardens, she balls up the cloth, then snaps it open again and again. As we head down the eastern cloister to her apartments in the southern building, she spins around.
“If I tell you what happened, will it stop the press of your puzzlement? Or do I have to retire myself tonight to get a reprieve from your maddening emotions?”
We fall into a brief silence, only punctuated by the occasional rumble of the earth.
“The least you can do is talk back,” she huffs.
“So you’d rather I be disrespectful?”
She glares at me, an icy fire once again sparking in her eyes. “He asked how I forged the diamond dagger. He wanted me to replicate the Illusion.”
“And did you?”
“I couldn’t.”
“I’m sorry, my lady,” I say.
“I could not replicate the Illusion because it was not an Illusion.”
Somewhere, an owl calls. “If it wasn’t an Illusion, then what was it?”
“I don’t know. I meant it to be real. A real…creation. But House Illusion is not capable of such a thing. No fae is, save for Reign.” She wraps her arms tighter around herself.
The owl calls again.Who who who.
“That is why the king left?” I ask.
“He’s lending the dagger to House of Healing to see if Eli can test it, see if I left some type of magical residue on it so they can trace the true source of its power.” My mistress turns away, pacing down the corridor once more. “Perhaps my magical marker will reek, too.”
Her words should sting, but they don’t. Now I see that they come from a place more complicated than cruelty. They come from grief. They come from unspent energy and anxiety and ragebecause she is strong in a way that females are forbidden to be, and that makes her dangerous.
In two days, I will begin to serve the king. Perhaps I can glean the answers, arm Kassandra with them to help tip the scales of power in our favor. How would Kassandra reward such an act of service? Paying off the debt of a young faerie boy should be nothing to her. But I need leverage to ask this. High Fae only know how to speak in games and deals.
It’s worth a try. There is so little left I can lose. Besides, now I know what rules the Heart of Illusion, and it is no male. And I know, for certain, her interest in me is of a different nature.
Chapter Thirteen
My knees against tile, mygenius scratching to get out. The veins in my neck stretch, bulging; I cannot move. I cannot do anything. Not as Jeremee becomes nothing, not as a child screams in pain.
I lurch awake, gasping with fear, heavy and hollow.
I study memories of Jae like river stones: his auburn hair, his long slender hands, the timbre of his voice, his embrace. Joking and dancing and laughing with him at the Full Moon Festivals. I sharpen these images lest the current of time smooths over the details and takes all I have left of him.
